It is important for companies to find cost effective ways to manage their digital file storage. Although it may seem that file storage is inexpensive, 80% or more of the total cost of ownership is in managing and administering that storage. Most organizations' need for file storage is growing at 40% to 50% per year, along with the cost to manage that storage. Many companies attempt to manage costs by having various tiers of storage, with different costs for each of these tiers. Along with this, most take the simplistic and costly approach of moving data solely based on when it was last used: “archive everything over x days old” from the higher cost primary storage tiers to the lower cost archival storage tiers.
But even this approach results in much greater costs than necessary as the data movement is not directly tied to storage policies, applicable rules, and the related actions that should be taken when specific user activity occurs. Instead, the entire file system is scanned week after week or month after month, with little result after the first such scan has been run. (If the data wasn't unused for 2 years at the last scan, the odds that has now become so are very small.)
In addition, it does not get those involved who can determine what should be archived and what should remain the same vs. what can be eliminated (i.e. deleted).
Two critical components are needed to implement truly cost effective data storage archive management—automation and the participation of end-users. Letting the users and creators of the data make decisions based on the business value of the document and future needs, while simultaneously completely eliminating unwanted/unneeded files greatly saves costs. This is because end-users are the best ones who know what should be archived or eliminated, vs. a mindless, broad based “archive everything over x days” approach. However, getting the end users to do participate in file management is difficult given the demands already placed on their time.
A number of storage software vendors provide solutions that will archive data. However they are based on the IT department configuring an archiving application to look for files over “x” days old and archive the resulting data. Then in order for the now configured archive solution to do its job, it must scan the entire primary storage device looking for files that meet the configuration profile established by the IT Department. This is a very “blunt instrument” approach. It is not user-driven and operates irrespective of the business value of the documents. These solutions do not involve users, who are the ones to know best what future value particular files may have.
Accordingly, what is needed is a cost-effective system and method for user-driven data archiving.